This being the first Christmas since 2001 that I have had a new job that requires at least 40 hours of my time each week, I thought we’d explore songs about work.

Everyone probably knows Johnny Paycheck’s 1977 hit, “Take This Job & Shove It,” a sentiment that definitely does not apply to my new job working with Amazon.

Huey Lewis & The News is one of my favorite groups from the ’80s. Here’s a minor hit from 1982:

Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in November 1980.

Tennessee Ernie Ford had a hit the year I was born, 1955, with “Sixteen Tons.” I sang this song in the school talent show when I was in seventh grade.

Best guitar solo in a working man’s song goes to Aleksandar Živojinović, better known as Alex Lifeson, of Rush in a song titled, coincidentally, “Working Man.”

A good song about what to do after work: “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere” by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett.

“Five O’clock World” by The Vogues, released in 1966, probably is the first time that I can remember hearing the phrase “it’s five o’clock” and understanding what it meant.

Perhaps my favorite of all the songs I considered for this post is Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Taking Care of Business” from 1974. Rise & shine, rinse & repeat, day after day after day….

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Photographic Art by Russel Ray Photos at Fine Art America